Seeing the two paintings—not just photographs of them—made everything real, didn’t it?
Lucas could visualize Oliver York brazenly walking into the rambling old house on a classic dark and stormy Irish night. John O’Byrne had been on vacation in Portugal, only Sean Murphy’s elderly uncle on the premises—dead asleep, he hadn’t heard a thing. Although this was his first heist, Oliver was good. Later, he’d broken into more challenging locations.
“What the hell were you thinking, Oliver?” Lucas asked in a whisper.
But the wealthy young Englishman hadn’t been thinking—he’d been coping with searing trauma, grief, isolation and shreds of memory that only years—decades—later would make sense to him.
Wendell Sharpe hadn’t gotten involved in the Declan’s Cross heist until six months later, after Oliver had helped himself to a landscape painting in a small Amsterdam museum. He’d sent Wendell, living in Dublin by then, a small, polished stone engraved with a stripped-down version of the Celtic cross he’d lifted from the O’Byrne house.
I like the guy, Lucas.
His grandfather at breakfast. But why not like Oliver and allow him to make amends—return the art, put his skills to use for the so-called greater good—since it was impossible to prosecute him, anyway? It didn’t mean he was excused for what he’d done, despite the mitigating factors, absence of violence and whatever else went to his side of the ledger.
Discovering the identity of their elusive art thief had been one of the bigger changes in Lucas’s work and personal life in the past year, and perhaps more than any other, illustrated the challenges he faced taking full control of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery from his aging grandfather. He’d started his business in his early twenties. It’d been just him for years. Decades. He had his ways, as he was fond of saying.
Sometimes Lucas wondered what secrets his grandfather hadn’t told him.
Other times, he didn’t want to know.
And yet he knew Wendell Sharpe was a man of integrity, and he followed the law.
“Still doesn’t mean he’s without secrets.”
Lucas had counted on his father as a buffer between them. Tim Sharpe had been born with a milder temperament than either his father or son, and years of chronic pain had only made him more contemplative, analytical and observant. And now he was gone. Wendell had been ambivalent about full retirement and kept sticking his fingers in the business—for the most part helpful—but losing his only son had taken a lot out of him.
Lucas accepted he and his grandfather both had things to figure out. Maybe Emma would quit the FBI and come back to the family business. Colin could join her. Lucas laughed to himself. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? Utter madness, no doubt.
A ray of sunshine took him to the windows in the attractive room. The morning light was spreading across the sea and the hotel gardens. Despite his promises to himself after yesterday’s brunch, he’d indulged in the O’Byrne House Hotel bread basket at breakfast. So much for low-carb.
He saw grandfather pacing on the terrace below the windows.
Lucas sighed. You promised.
No way out of it.
Time for his granddad’s banshees.
* * *
By the time Lucas trotted down the stairs and out the French doors to the terrace, his grandfather was in an aggrieved mood. “You don’t have to go with me. I don’t need you to babysit me.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the headland. “I want to walk up there. You can go for a run.”
“Not with a pound of bread in me. I’ll go with you.” Lucas grinned at the old man. “We can take it slow. I’ll kick back and enjoy the scenery.”
“It’s a good thing your grandmother liked you. I never did.” But his grandfather grinned and put his foot up on a metal chair to tie the laces. “Beautiful Irish morning. We’ll have fun.”
“It’ll be a bonding experience,” Lucas said, not too sarcastically.
“What the hell is a bonding experience? Never mind. Aoife O’Byrne’s cottage and Sean Murphy’s farm are up there.”
“And a lot of sheep,” Lucas said. “Want to take the car up onto the headland, at least? It flattens out—”
“Nope. Walk.”
They set off, maintaining a steady pace through the pretty village of Declan’s Cross with its simple buildings painted in a variety of bright colors. A few overflowing flower baskets hung on black-painted lampposts, even now in October. Brushed by the Gulf Stream, Declan’s Cross didn’t get as cold as Maine in fall and winter.
When they came to a cute bookshop and turned up the hill onto the headland, Lucas noticed his grandfather growing more pensive—not his style. Banshees, his son’s death, his own sunset years. Whatever was on Wendell’s mind, Lucas figured talking meant neither of them was overstraining. “Aoife’s in love with Finian Bracken, you know,” he said casually.
“Genuinely, or as a convenience? He’s the classic forbidden love. Telling herself she’s in love with him allows her to focus on her work without having to bother with the distractions. Finding a man, raising a family.”
“An excuse to be self-absorbed?”
Wendell shrugged, zipped up his jacket. “Maybe so.”
“We’ve seen that type in our work,” Lucas said. “They tell themselves they’re focusing on their art when they’re indulging their narcissism. They’d be narcissists if they did something else.”
“Voice of experience?”
Lucas had dated his share of that type, ever to his regret, but he toned down the edge in his voice. This was supposed to be a pleasant walk. He didn’t need to go deep with his grandfather on his love life, such as it was. “I don’t know Aoife well enough to say what her motives are, but there are plenty of brilliant artists who manage relationships successfully. A discussion for another day.”
“Do you see Father Bracken often?”
“Not often.”
“Emma said he did a great job at your dad’s funeral. You’re not angry with me for staying here?”
“Not in the least,” Lucas said without hesitation. “It didn’t occur to me to be upset. It would have been tough on you to make that trip, Granddad. Fortunately you’d just seen each other, and you had him and Mom close by in London for the past year.”
“And your mother—she mad at me?”
“She told Emma and me to beg you to stay in Ireland, and not because she thinks you’re a pain in the ass.”
Wendell grinned. “I think I’d rather have that than the age thing again. One can do what one can do, whatever the age. Tim felt as if he was living on borrowed time since that fall on the ice. He lived each day to its fullest. A good example for us, Lucas, no matter how many days we have left—since we don’t know.”
The lane wound close to the cliffs and sea. With the tide coming in, crashing onto the rocks, Lucas could taste the salt spray on the breeze. “Well, I expect we’ll have today, don’t you?”
“So far, so good, but it’s not yet ten o’clock.”
They continued up the hill at a slower pace, Lucas commenting on the fencing, the sheep, the hazards and temptations of Irish country roads—until he just gave up and walked in silence. They passed the yellow-painted bungalow Aoife had rented for the past few months. Lucas didn’t know if she’d chosen a place to purchase now that she’d decided to live in Declan’s Cross full-time. Her car was parked in the driveway, a few articles of clothing on the line in the side yard and a window cracked open, but no sign of the artist herself.
“You don’t fancy Aoife yourself, do you?” Wendell asked.
Lucas shook his head. “She’s a beautiful, fascinating woman, but no, I don’t.”
“That new assistant at the Heron’s Cove offices?”
“Granddad.”
“Were you invited to that Donovan wedding on Saturday?”
“
I was.”
“Maybe the bride has a sister.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Glad I moved to Dublin?” They paused at a hedgerow, topped with barbed-wire fencing and, on the other side, sheep grazing in a lush, green field. “You remind me of your father right now. You’re more forthcoming by nature than he was. He was private even as a little tyke. He never told his mother and me he was serious about Faye until he’d proposed to her.”
“I still miss Grandma.”
“She was something.” Wendell watched as two sheep waddled to him. “Tim handled his heart condition in a way that suited him. Your mother supported his choice. It had to do with who he was, not who we are.”
Lucas noticed the splotches of blue paint on the sheep’s wool that served as a brand. He assumed the sheep belonged to Sean Murphy, who owned a farm on the headland but worked as a detective in Dublin. Wendell had lived in the same town house in Dublin, where he’d been born, for sixteen years now. He’d never expected to be widowed so soon, but he’d made a good life for himself in Ireland—away from the memories in every step he took in Heron’s Cove.
“I carved out a studio apartment for you in the new offices,” Lucas said. “You’re welcome to move in anytime.”
“Always good to have a bolt-hole.” His grandfather started along the lane again. It leveled off, and the rest of their route would be easier going, if not entirely flat. “How is Emma, Lucas?”
“I haven’t seen much of her since she got back from Ireland. She says she’s been buried in work.”
“And Colin’s been away.”
They both knew why. Colin was an undercover agent. Lucas suspected it was dangerous work, and isolating—for him and for his family, and especially for Emma, now his wife. But she was an FBI agent herself, and she’d had her time with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart to help her know herself, center herself.
The lane narrowed further and became a dirt track before dead-ending at the stone ruins of what once had been a church. Lucas followed his grandfather over a hedgerow and through a scatter of crooked, lichen-covered gravestones to a grassy hillside—part of the Murphy farm—and finally up to three large Celtic stone crosses. It was here, in August, Wendell was convinced he’d heard a banshee keening shortly before his only son’s death.
Lucas shuddered when the wind gusted, whistling among the crosses and ruins. “I told Emma if I hear a banshee, I’m turning tail and running back to the hotel.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Technically, I don’t believe in that stuff, Granddad.”
“My mother did. Your great-grandmother.”
They stared at the sea, churning under a clear sky. It wouldn’t last. Clouds were due to move in by early afternoon.
“I heard what I heard, and what happened, happened,” Wendell said. “That’s all I know.”
“It’s a beautiful place.”
“It is. I know that, too.”
* * *
Aoife waved to them in her cottage door on the way back to the village, but she wasn’t alone. She stood aside, and Sean Murphy took her place. Dark-haired, blue-eyed and handsome, he had a grim look. “Wendell, Lucas. Come in, both of you. Please.”
But it wasn’t a request.
They joined Aoife and Sean in her kitchen. She had something simmering on the stove that smelled wonderful—apple compote, she explained. “I’m feeling very domestic these days. Nesting, I suppose, now that I’m settling in Declan’s Cross. Sean walked up from his farmhouse.”
“I saw you two pass by,” Sean said. “You went out to the ruin at the tip of the headland?”
“Beautiful morning for a walk,” Wendell said. Lucas took his vague, pleasant remark as a clue not to mention banshees to the Irish detective.
Sean pointed at a watercolor painting set on a wood chair pushed against the wall at the entrance to the adjoining sitting room, now Aoife’s studio. “This is a new installment in a series Aoife is doing set in a woodland not far from here. The one she sold last weekend in Dublin is part of the same series.”
Aoife moved to the stove and her bubbling compote. “The man who bought it was delighted and went away happy.”
“Robin Masterson,” Lucas said.
Sean got out his phone. “Aoife describes him as a man in his late forties, dark, gray eyes, scars on his hands.”
“The scars were disconcerting,” she said. “They came from a fight not a cooking accident. I’m sure of it. He had a rough air about him.”
Sean passed his phone to Lucas, who’d sat next to Wendell at the pine table. “Take a look at this man. What do you think?”
Lucas expected a man as Aoife described, but the one in the photo was older, early sixties, maybe. Balding. Glasses. Definitely not a “rough air” about him. He showed the phone to his grandfather, who peered at the photo and shook his head, obviously with the same reaction Lucas had. He handed the phone back to Sean. “Who is this?”
Sean pocketed the phone. “Do you recognize him?”
“I don’t,” Lucas said. “Granddad?”
He shook his head. “No. Who is this man, Sean?”
“He’s Robin Masterson. The real Robin Masterson.”
Aoife placed her stirring spoon on the stove. “But the paperwork—it was all in his name.”
“I know, Aoife,” Sean said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
But there was more. Lucas could see it in Sean’s narrowed eyes, his intensity. “What else, Sean?” Wendell asked.
“Robin Masterson died in a London hospital early this morning.”
19
Emma studied the photo Lucas had texted. It was of an Aoife O’Byrne painting in the same series as the one Georgina said her father had bought for her. Her brother was still on the phone with her. He’d called early, but she was up, making coffee, thinking. Colin was awake, too, taking a shower. Fog had settled in on their stretch of the Maine coast, as if to lure them to Hurley’s in sweatshirts and jeans for coffee and pancakes. They’d wait for the sun to burn through the fog and the harbor to glisten with the promise of another beautiful autumn day.
She put the phone back to her ear. “I know this spot, Lucas. It’s one of the few woodlands on Lamb’s Head in Declan’s Cross. Are you still up there?”
“Granddad and I just left Aoife’s cottage. Sean Murphy is one unhappy detective, Emma.”
“We’ll expect him to be in touch, then.”
“Do you know who posed as Robin Masterson?”
“I have an idea, yes. How’s Granddad?”
“He perked up having a mystery to solve.” Lucas paused, and Emma could picture the two of them on the headland lane, the sea to their right as they walked back to the village. “We went out to the ruins where he heard the banshee before Dad died.”
“How was it out there?” Emma asked.
“No banshees. It was peaceful. You could feel it, Emma. Just...peaceful.”
“What will you and Granddad do now?”
“Stick around here until we know how this plays out. This guy who bought the painting—he’s why Henrietta Balfour was in Dublin?”
“I don’t know, Lucas. Did Sean mention Henrietta?”
“No,” her brother said. “Granddad didn’t bring her up. Since I didn’t see her myself, I kept my mouth shut. Want us to go back and tell Sean?”
“We’ll deal with Sean. I suggest you and Granddad resume your plans for the day.”
“If you need us, get in touch. We were supposed to head back to Dublin today, but I think we’ll book another night here. Granddad’s worn himself out walking. He’ll need a nap.”
Emma smiled when she heard her grandfather muttering in the background. She said goodbye, uneasy but also confident the two Sharpes could handle themselves. Her confidence was bolstered by knowing Jeremy Pear
son—the man Aoife had described—was across the Atlantic in Rock Point, down the street from her at St. Patrick’s rectory. He was Colin’s friend. She didn’t know the details, but they had a history that had formed a bond between them.
Colin came into the kitchen, freshly showered. He poured coffee and she showed him the photo from Lucas. “I recognize this spot,” she said of the woodland scene, transformed with Aoife’s artistic eye and skill.
Colin pointed at the ground. “Mushrooms?”
Emma nodded. “Chanterelles.”
“Same mushrooms Georgina picked with her father last Sunday in England and then at the convent on Saturday. Doesn’t mean anything by itself, but let’s go see who’s up at the rectory. Good plan?”
“Excellent plan.”
They grabbed jackets and headed out. As tempting as it was to walk, they decided to take separate vehicles the few blocks to the rectory, given the uncertainty about what the next steps were.
When they arrived, Henrietta was raking leaves in the front yard. “Oliver and I were up on London time. We’ve already been to Hurley’s for doughnuts.” She sighed happily, standing the rake upright next to her. “It’s premature to rake, I suppose, given the number of leaves yet to fall, but it can’t hurt to get a jump on the work.”
“We’re not here about raking,” Colin said.
She narrowed her eyes on him. “I know. Oliver’s in the kitchen with Finian, preparing tea and toast for Jeremy. He’s awake. We spoke briefly after I got back from breakfast.” She paused, plucked a few leaves that had stuck to the rake tines. “He knows Robin Masterson died earlier today.”
She dropped the leaves she’d plucked into the small pile she’d managed to assemble. “Jeremy spoke with the hospital. They’ve been in touch with Georgina, so she knows about her father.”
Colin toed a few of the leaves in Henrietta’s pile. “Has Jeremy spoken with her?”
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